Proper Thieves
Page 26
Why didn’t I think of that? Devan fumed. Why didn’t I think of that?
“Can you get it out?” Zella asked quickly. Her voice was edging close to panic. “I want it out of me! Can you get it out?”
“I think so!” Allister said, taking a quick step back away from Zella. “Yeah, I...I think so!”
Zella nodded. Her eyes, half crazed, flicked from Allister to Breigh to Nalan, but she didn’t seem to actually see any of them. She lowered herself down to the ground.
Devan bit his lip and turned away.
Allister’s voice was soft. “Hey. Are you…?”
“No,” Zella said. “No, I’m not. This is…”
Devan snuck another look back, just for a moment. Zella had wrapped her arms around herself and she was trembling. Breigh took a knee beside her and wrapped her arms around her, too.
Breigh began bloviating about Tolem getting his turn at being violated, but Zella cut her off. “Fuck this,” she hissed. “And fuck Tolem.” She drew her knees up to her chest, buried her head in her arms, and said nothing more.
Devan cringed as he watched from afar. He crushed his eyes shut and turned away.
“Okay,” Nalan said. “I think that’s enough talking it out.”
Zella
Devan was still off in the tall grass staring at his coin.
Breigh was sharpening a stick with a rough stone.
Allister was pretending to sleep in the driver’s seat of the airship.
Nalan was waking up outside the ship:
Zella was lying on her back in the center of their camp, looking up at the dark sky. She paused, not sure how, or even if she should begin.
Breigh snorted.
Allister said.
There was a pause on the line, then Nalan replied,
Breigh’s voice had a ring of certainty to it that Zella found extremely comforting.
<...We make our way back into The Palace and find Tolem’s crew, or at least someone who knows where they went…>
{Breigh,} Devan said.
Breigh continued undeterred. <...And when we find them, we get some wine, we get some choice mutton and some of those salted breads like we had in Ptolimar, and we find ourselves a nice comfortable cabin out in the woods somewhere…>
<...And we spend the next two weeks peeling all the skin off their bodies with the head of an old dull shovel.>
Zella could feel Allister shudder through the link.
Breigh stood firm:
Devan sighed on his end of the link.
Zella scowled at that.
Zella fumbled for the words.
The link was silent for a time.
Then Allister said,
Zella interjected:
Allister opened the line, made a sound like he was about to say something, and then closed the line again.
Zella’s face softened.
But for Allister, the flood gates were open.
He sighed into the line.
Zella chose her next words carefully:
Zella could hear Devan snort from the other side of the campsite.
No one replied to that.
Devan went on.
Breigh grunted softly into the link, but said nothing.
she said.
<...Go on.> Devan’s voice was brimming with venom.
Breigh said nothing for a long time. Then…
<...What?> Allister sounded shocked.
The voice was Nalan’s. Zella had all but forgotten he was even listening in.
Devan sputtered.
<“Surprise without forethought or intelligence is not a plan, unless you are planning a suicide.”> Nalan was obviously quoting something.
Breigh gasped loud enough for the others to hear without the link.
Nalan replied.
Breigh gasped again.
Zella growled faintly in the back of her throat.
Zella shook her head. She ground the palms of her hands into her eyes.
The calm in Nalan’s voice made Zella want to scream. She jumped to her feet, stalked across the campsite, and dropped heavily down on her knees next to Nalan. He was sitting leaned up against the side of the airship. Nalan’s face was bruised badly from the beating the guards had given him, and he still had blood crusted in the wispy whiskers on his chin.
He looked over at her and grimaced. Zella could see it written across his face. He didn’t like saying the things he’d said. But it didn’t mean those things weren’t true.
Zella looked into his eyes for a good long time, and gradually her face began to soften.
“Goddamn it, Nalan,” she said, stroking his hair. “Why do you always have to make so much fucking sense?”
He smiled in that sideways way he had. “Sorry,” he said.
Zella re-opened the link long enough to say,
Z kissed Nalan on the forehead and stood to make her way back to where she’d been lying. As she sat back down in the dirt, she looked off in the distance and found Devan there, still sitting in the tall grass on the edge of the campsite, still staring at the coin in his palm.
She rose again and began walking over his way. But when he saw her coming, he lay down on his side, facing away from her.
Zella cocked her head to one side and watched him for a time. Then she turned back, laid down on the ground, and tried to get some sleep.
Samus
“Where are the tits?” rasped Vertus. His scaly brown face peeked out from under the hood of his white bathing gown. “The willowy little faggot who pointed me in here promised me tits.”
Hovering behind Vertus’ lounge chair, Samus peered over the railing and down to the Azjeeri baths below. Nestled in a small rain forest of palms and wildflowers, sixteen stone pools sparkled like gemstones, each lit by sunbeams streamed through a different colored section of the baths’ tremendous stained glass dome. A small stream connected each pool to the other, cascading from where Vertus sat in the exclusive Crane Pool down to the children’s pools three stories below.
“You know,” Samus said, pulling over a chair to sit a healthy distance from his associate, “The Palace burns entire forests every day to heat the water in these pools. It took twenty years to build; the dome alone cost more to construct than the sultanate spends on one of its less interesting wars. And in the face of this opulence, this egregious display of vulgar wealth, all you can say is…”
Vertus coughed loudly, wetly. And continually until almost all of the wait staff had stopped what they were doing to watch. Samus merely closed his eyes and waited.
When he’d finally finished, Vertus wiped his lips on his gown, leaving a long black streak on its silky white hem.
“No, seriously though,” he said. “The tits. Where are they?”
Samus watched Vertus through narrowed eyes. “You may have noticed,” Samus eventually said, “that the causeways and promontories haven’t exactly been teeming with patrons these past two days. The Cenerons may have convinced the Kaulethi town fathers to let us stay the rest of the week, but it seems they have some small way yet to go in convincing the average nobleman on the street that we won’t repay their patronage with a guard’s broadsword through the face.”
“Bunch of cunts,” Vertus slurred. He took a long drink from his cocktail. Samus wasn’t sure who the cunts were that Vertus was referring to. Likely, he meant the Kaulethi women who weren’t there to let him cough all over their breasts. “So what do you want, you fat little pimp?”
“To get your opinion on something. And to ask you a question.”
Vertus wheezed as he straightened himself in his chair. “Is that right? How exciting.”
“Our prince, he left this morning.”
“He what?” Vertus shot a startled look over at Samus. “Tolem left?”
“He did. He and his shapely young beet farmer. They’ll be back this evening. They went to try and find his five illegitimate children.”
“How could he—” Vertus stopped mid-exclamation and leaned in closer to Samus, whispering, “How could he leave us here? Now? We’re almost out of replacements. What happens if…”
“These are all questions I asked him myself. But he wouldn’t be deterred. Tolem meant to leave this morning, and leave he did.” Samus leaned in closer too. “Which leads me to the opinion I wanted from you.”
“My opinion is that he’s out of his goddamn skull.” Vertus sat his empty glass on the table beside him. “This plan he came up with to plunder the treasure room was a stroke of fucking genius, no question. But why we didn’t just hire a team of thugs to fight our way out of here with it the night of the riot is beyond me.”
“Yes,” Samus said. He decided to keep his thoughts on that matter to himself for the moment.
“Everyone in this place was running around like their asses were on fire. We pick an exit, slaughter a dozen or so guards and a dozen or so bystanders, push a few carts out into the night…who’s going to notice in all that insanity?” Vertus sneered and looked around. “Instead, he’s got us sitting here, waiting with our dicks dangling in the breeze. Why? It makes no fucking sense.”
Samus didn’t
answer; he stared off into the distance, nodding.
Vertus struck him on the chest with the back of his hand. “He didn’t tell you anything, did he? Seems like he tells you everything. And of course that wisp of a ginger whore he takes everywhere with him, she knows everything. Me, he tells nothing. Even that inbred northerner he hired to poison the fighter girl probably hears more than me. How is that?” He hit Samus again. “Without me, without my connections and my money, you know where this fucking plan would be? Do you?”
Samus pushed his chair out of Vertus’ reach and glared at him. He took a deep breath. “I’m sure Tolem holds you in only the highest regard,” he said through a sneer. “How could he not? A man of your…station.”
“You talk nice to me, you pampered fuck,” Vertus said, stabbing a stump of a finger in Samus’ face. “You think you’re something because you got a job up Faerathore’s asshole? I’ve got more important vermin than you growing on my ballsack.”
Samus bit back the first three responses that came to mind. The fourth he reworded three different times before he opened his mouth. “I apologize. The stress must be getting to me. It has to be getting to all of us.”
Vertus eyed him warily, then sat back in his seat. “You got that right.”
Samus leaned in again. “I find myself wondering how the stress is getting to Tolem. What he did, the way he went about it, throwing his own nephew to the wolves…he likes to let people think he’s hard as old nails, but you saw what he was like that night before the job. And now he’s out there looking for them.”
“What are you getting at?” Vertus motioned over to a server for another drink.
“We’re here for four more days. We need to talk—you and me—about what happens if we’re discovered. Because if Tolem had a hard time with the idea of killing a few dozen the night of the riot, how will he react if things really need to get gruesome?”
Vertus nodded slowly. “You said you had a question for me.”
“And here it is,” Samus said. “If the knives do end up needing to come out…how dear is your friendship with Tolem, really?”